Hundreds of animal rights activists have rallied in Melbourne's CBD, calling for the end to slaughterhouses amid meat sales outside the city's renowned Queen Victoria Market.
About 500 protesters marched in an anti-clockwise route around the outskirts of the Queen Victoria Market on Saturday, with a speech and demonstration at the front entrance to the meat and fish hall.
The march coincided with other rallies across the world, including in the United States, England, France, Spain and Canada.
Guest speaker and president of Animal Liberation Tasmania, Kristy Alger, told AAP that market shoppers seemed "intrigued" by the protest.
"We need to create a world of justice through our compassion and our mercy and our love banding together as a movement," she says.
Spokesperson Leah Folloni said the market was symbolically chosen.
"It's a place where the dismembered bodies of animals are being sold," she told AAP.
"We're raising awareness of the detrimental effects of slaughterhouses, and the effects not just on animals but on the human animal as well.
"I think people are waking up and realising that humans are also animals and we all feel pain and we all feel fear and we all love our family."
The march was run by March to Close all Slaughterhouses, an organisation calling for abolition of the practices that harm animals.
